Welcome to Jazztheorylessons.com, the best place to find lessons on jazz theory and improvisation. If you are looking to learn jazz theory then our free jazz lessons will help you. We will be adding new and interesting jazz theory lessons each week. Our site is here to make learning jazz theory fun and interesting. We have lessons on scales, jazz chords, modes, arpeggios and jazz repertoire. 
This lesson will help you think about jazz theory and help you find a way to organize your jazz theory practice time. When we start learning jazz music theory, it is easy to get bogged down with individual topics and lose track of where we are. Jazz theory can be a fun and interesting topic but you need to have a structured approach to learning jazz theory. I will try and outline the main topics you need to think about when you are learning jazz theory. We can break our practice time down into small sections and work on each section in turn. When learning anything, it really helps to have a plan of action by following the list below you will have a structured guide to learning jazz theory.
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Tritone substitution is a really great way to spice up your jazz chord progressions and add interest to common chord progressions. Tritone substitution is a great method to add tension and interest to a solo or chord progression and is a very common jazz idea.
In jazz, a tritone substitution is where you substitute a dominant seventh chord with another dominant chord that is three whole steps (a tritone, or 6 semitones) away from the original dominant seventh chord. An example of this would be replacing a G7 chord for another dominant seven chord that is a tritone (6 semitones) away from G which would be a Db7 chord. The main reason that these two dominant seventh chords may be substituted for each other is that they share the two of the same notes that form a tritone in each chord. In a G7 chord, the third is B and the seventh is F. In the D♭7 chord, the third is an F and the seventh is a B note. The tritone substitution kind of sounds like an altered G7 chord to the listeners ear.
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When you start out playing jazz, you will come across the term “Altered dominants” quite often and in this article I will explain a bit about altered dominant chords and how you can play over them.
Altered dominant chords are basically dominant seventh chords with non diatonic notes added to them to make them sound more tense than a regular dominant chord. The new real book describes and altered chord in jazz as a dominant chord, “in which neither the fifth nor the ninth appears unaltered” and which therefor “contains b5 &/or #5, and b9 &/or #9″
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2-5-1 chord progressions are on of the most important things you will learn about when starting to play jazz and in this article I am going to show you everything you need to know about playing over a two five one. A 2-5-1 progression refers to a chord progression made up from the 2nd, 5th and 1st chords in the major scale. We will go into more depth about the actual progression in a minute. Basically if you are going to play jazz you will need to know how to improvise over a 2-5-1 progression simply because they occur in almost every jazz standard you will come across. The simple two, five, one chord sequence is so important that you can find jazz songs made up entirely of this one progression.
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In part one of this article we looked at the basic triad chords and now it is time to start looking at how other chords are constructed. We can add one or more notes onto the basic major, minor and diminished triad to form more interesting and harmonically rich chord voicings.
The whole process of extending chords is not complicated at all, despite the fancy names some of these chords produce. We are simply adding notes onto the basic triad chord in order to make them more interesting. Always think in terms of chords as being nothing more than a collection of notes taken from a scale. The more notes you add to the triad the more harmonically dense and jazzy it sounds. Sometimes adding more notes to a chord can really add something special to the harmony but sometimes it can make things sound cluttered. It is up to you to learn when and when not to use rich sounding chords.
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In this lesson we are going to take a look at how chords are constructed and used in jazz.
Understanding how chords are put together is not as difficult as you may imagine.
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